In other places on around the web, (chiefly /r/RedditAlternatives) whenever Lemmy is brought up, invariably I see the exact same complaints from brand new accounts.
Lemmy is too complicated, it wont gain traction, can’t figure out how to use it, can’t log in, etc.
Now, I’m definitely more tech savvy than the average redditor, but I just don’t see the complaints. You can go to any Lemmy site, instantly start doomscrolling with a familiar UI, and sign up on all the instances I’ve tried has been frankly more simple than making a new reddit account. The only real complaint I have is the generally smaller volume of users and posts.
My only thought here is the words like federation and instances getting people hung up. Maybe join-lemmy.org being a highly ranked site is doing more harm than good by creating an additional barrier to the instances and content.
Ideally, the first link someone sees when googling Lemmy would be a global feed on a fairly generic instance, with a basic tagline akin to ‘front page of the internet.’ End users don’t need to care about the technical details, at least not until they’re interested in the platform.
So is this “Lemmy is too confusing” sentiment even real? And if not, what motive would there be to astroturf this?
If it is a real issue affecting would-be users, how can we address it?
No one deserves to be called stupid just because they struggle with an objectively poor onboarding process and gate keeping.
I am perfectly able to navigate Lemmy’s interface and I still think it’s a pile of Garbage. It suffers from the same problem most projects suffer from. Designed by a programmer not a UX designer.
Also I would rather enjoy if Lemmy didn’t just become an echo chamber of extremism in the opposite direction of reddit. Cause at this rate Lemmy is already becoming a cess pit of echo chambers and extreme levels of gate keeping.
For that you need a board spectrum of people. Including those you seem “stupid”.
So fuck off with your gate keeping. Be helpful and set a good example.
Nah gatekeeping is good. I agree this place and the fediverse in general are massive echo chambers and that’s bad, but the more of the general public that gets on a platform the worse it gets. Obviously you can’t have an IQ filter or a test to get on, so a janky hard to use interface is good enough to scare away Facebook drones and brainrot zombies.